Collage with Drawing

 Drawing is my favorite medium, but I thin it's a bit dull on its own.  So I've been trying to find a way to liven it up.  One effort was in my pieces of Jane Austen cats where I began with pencil drawings then colorized them with watercolor pencils and colored pencils.   I think they turned out nice, but I also knew that my quest wasn't over.

Here's my latest attempt - a collage with pencil drawings as some of the elements. 

After I chose my theme (you may well wonder what it is!) and knew what drawing elements I wanted I created them individually, one by one.  The only way I was concerned about them "going together" was their approximate relative sizes.  I wasn't necessarily trying for a realistic scale, just a pleasing one.

To put the collage together, I first prepared a piece of hardboard by spraying it with primer.  I ripped the drawn images carefully around their edges then protected them from smearing by spraying the individual drawings with workable fixative.

The next step was to adhere the individual pieces to the board with an even coat of matte gel medium.  I also covered all the pieces with an even coat of gel medium so that they would take the paint evenly later.  The metallic pieces you see are from the wrappings of chocolate Easter eggs I bought in England - I couldn't resist this gorgeous salmon color!

PS  The text is from an old Latin book I had in college - Plautus' plays!